Go from overstuffed drawers and file systems to one-of-a-kind insights

In business, as in life, many problems are a matter of perspective. For instance, think about stacks of paper documents or extensive stores of poorly organized digital files. They take up space (either physical or digital), and they’re difficult to sort through to find what you need. But from another perspective, all those documents are a knowledge resource — your data overhead — that’s just waiting to be tapped.

You know your business is able to run effectively even without ready access to that information (it’s what you’re doing right now). But think about how much value you could add to your organization if you changed that overhead into business intelligence. Here’s how to make it happen.

What (and where) is data overhead?

Data overhead is any type of data that your organization retains but does not use. It comes in many forms: reports about your business that are more than a few years old, invoices from contractors that were already processed and paid, and records of sales data for discontinued products or services are common examples.

These are just some of the places you may find data overhead hiding across your organization:

• Stacks and cabinets: Even if your business is in the midst of a digital transformation, you likely still have a good amount of information in physical form. Whether it’s messy stacks of paper on the boss’ desk or well-ordered record rooms, it’s still data overhead if you can’t use the contents to generate value.
• Local storage: Digitized or digitally native documents can also be a source of data overhead if they’re difficult to access. That could be because an important record only lives in a USB drive on someone’s desk — or it could be because the file system in your on-premises server racks is poorly organized and maintained.
• Cloud storage: Moving data to the cloud makes it more accessible to employees and partners wherever they are. Unfortunately, “having” and “finding” are two separate things. If employees need to spend time punching in esoteric search queries to find relevant information, your cloud-based data is still overhead.

Since data overhead isn’t actively contributing value to your business, maintaining it is a source of loss rather than a value generator. On the other hand, you may need to hold onto some documents for compliance reasons or because they’re the sole source of a rarely accessed, but no less essential, piece of information. Simply throwing them all out isn’t a realistic solution.

Many businesses retain documents in a variety of locations “just in case.” Intelligently processing and retaining the data they contain based on necessity and value allows you to unlock unique business intelligence in several ways:

• Rather than relying on industry-wide reports you must pay to access, you can analyze the trends in years or decades’ worth of your own sales data.
• You can find contacts that have fallen by the wayside and pursue them as new potential sales leads or returning partners.
• When combined with AI applications that can sort and interpret massive quantities of data, the possibilities of what to do with the data you already own become even more compelling.

Did You Know?:If you need the right tool to help take your documents from physical to digital, we’re ready to help. Check out the full range of fi Series and ScanSnap scanners to learn more.

Reimagine document storage to turn data overhead into value

No two organizations handle their document storage and information processes the exact same way. You may not need to change every part of your current system to make your stores of data more of an asset and less of a liability. With that in mind, here are three distinct methods you can take to reimagine your document storage that are effective on their own and even better when combined.

Intelligent classification

This is one of the fastest ways to turn a pile of documents or data from a big question mark into a neat data store. Intelligent classification is the ability for software to sort documents into their proper homes in your file system based on the information they contain. It’s an essential part of intelligent document processing.

For example, your intelligent document processing system could allow you to define multiple types of forms. You could note where the total value of an invoice is recorded on one type of form and where a customer’s primary contact method is defined on another. Intelligent classification can then use those attributes to identify what each document is and send the associated data where it needs to go.

Cloud-based architectures

Managing your own storage solutions on-premises can be affordable, but it can also be its own cause of data overhead. Keeping documents in local servers, hard drives, thumb drives, and paper stacks makes it hard to get a holistic view of all the information your organization has access to at any given time.

Investing in a cloud-based architecture allows you to offload the task of data storage to a dedicated partner. By keeping all your data in the cloud, you make it easier to access for employees regardless of how they report in to work. You also reduce the need for physical, on-premises solutions, such as server and record rooms. Modern cloud architectures allow for easy searching, sorting, and classification, which makes them a great pair for intelligent document processing systems.

Tiered storage

Not all of your data is equally important, so it doesn’t make sense to treat it all the same way. Tiered storage is an orderly approach to storing documents and other types of data based on how readily available they must be. This allows organizations to balance access versus cost to find the most effective solution.

For instance, documents that are referenced and edited constantly will likely belong to the most important tier of storage. Documents that are infrequently accessed and only held for archival purposes may belong to the lowest. Different tiers of data are then stored in different ways: the highest may be placed in high-speed storage that is more expensive but ensures speedy and uninterrupted access. Lower tiers may be retained in slower, less expensive media.

Did You Know?:If your business operates across multiple locations, smart document storage is all the more essential. Our remote distributed scanning service can help keep your teams efficient and aligned.

Simplify your document storage

Looking for a simple way to get started? No matter where you are in the process, Ricoh is ready to help you reimagine how you store and use documents. Our PaperStream Capture Pro solution allows you to digitize and intelligently classify dozens of different document types in a single batch thanks to automated form processing, all with streamlined quality control that keeps the process running smoothly.

Download our free document storage checklist for more ways to turn your data overhead into real value for your business.

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